Music on the Bamboo Radio Page 2

As night fell, they left the depression and took a path down towards the city. Ah Kwan moved ahead, slipping from shadow to shadow, signalling them to wait or edge forward. The steep streets were eerily still. No lights shone at windows or doors. Every now and then, they met another person moving surreptitiously about in the darkness, exchanged a few muffled words and went on, ever downwards through the narrow alleyways towards the harbour.

  Close to a quay, they halted and hid in a doorway whilst Ah Kwan scouted the waterfront. He had been gone less than a minute when the sound of a lorry approached, its engine grinding in low gear. The headlights swung by and, as they lit the road, Nicholas saw a dead man stretched out across the far kerb. He was a coolie, his rattan conical hat lying near his feet. The lorry went by. From its regimental insignia and number-plate, Nicholas could tell it was a British Army vehicle but, by the glow of the dashboard lights, he saw the driver was a Japanese soldier. The front wheel ran over and crushed the dead man’s hat.

  When it was gone, Ah Kwan appeared and, with hand signals, guided them to the quay and down some steps slippery with seaweed. At the bottom of the steps bobbed a sampan.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Nicholas asked Ah Mee as they settled themselves against the gunwales of the sampan. The water slopping about under the deck boards smelt strongly of fish.

  ‘We go long way,’ she replied. ‘Over Nine Dragon Mountains. Tomorrow, walk long time.’

  Ah Kwan cast the sampan off and took hold of the single stern oar, moving it to and fro with a fluid action. The bow swung round and they headed out into the harbour. The sea was utterly black with not so much as a star reflecting upon it.

  Just as dawn was breaking, Ah Kwan steered the sampan into a beach. As soon as they were all ashore, he set it adrift. Ah Mee led Nicholas into the cover of some dense bushes whilst Tang and Ah Kwan erased their footprints from the sand with bunches of twigs. This done, Tang untied his bundle, removing several pieces of clothing which he handed to Nicholas.

  ‘You put on,’ he ordered. ‘Shoes can stay but no more wear you shirt, trousers. You must look like Chinese boy.’ Ah Mee produced a pair of scissors. ‘Ah Mee cut you hair short all over now.’

  Nicholas removed his clothes, putting on a dark blue sam jacket with a row of cloth buttons and wide sleeves, and a pair of baggy fu trousers which Tang folded for him at the waist.

  ‘Must I have my hair cut?’ he asked reluctantly.

  ‘Must do,’ Tang replied tersely. ‘You have Chinese boy haircut now. No good if you wear Chinese clothes but still look like English boy. If Japanese soldier think you English, he kill you. He kill everybody.’ Then he grinned and added, ‘Lucky you got dark hair. If not, we must make dark colour.’

  When his head was close-cropped, Ah Kwan gave Nicholas a small round hat made of varnished cane, such as coolies wore. Held in place with a cord knotted under his chin, it fitted well and completed his disguise.

  Tang inspected Nicholas and announced, ‘Now we go.’

  Taking up their bundles, they climbed some wooden steps leading from the beach to a road. At the kerb, Tang halted.

  ‘Today,’ he told Nicholas sternly, ‘you no talk. No say anything. You do what I tell you. No question. Just do. You understand?’

  Nicholas thought of the dead man in the gutter and nodded solemnly. Tang smiled, touched his cheek and said, ‘You no worry. Tang, Ah Mee look out good for you.’

  They set off along the road. For the first half-kilometre, they might have been on a Sunday stroll. Birds twittered in the bushes, lizards rustled dry leaves as they skittered away and crickets hissed in the grass clumps. Through the trees, Nicholas could see the sea, its smooth surface lightly rippled by a dawn breeze.

  Not until they rounded a corner by a clump of bamboo did Nicholas come across his first close-up sign of war. It was a black Humber saloon car, an army staff car, with its windows smashed and one of its doors torn off and lying in the road. Beside it were a dark puddle and a scattering of brass shell cases shining dully in the early, flat daylight. As they passed the vehicle, Nicholas looked away. The dark puddle was probably engine oil, but it could just as easily have been congealed blood.

  It was not long before they entered the first streets in Kowloon, close to a large military barracks. Here, there was no birdsong. The tenement buildings were silent, the windows closed and doors barred. A few people scuttled here and there, walking quickly, ducking furtively into alleyways or arcades where the shops were all boarded up. Only the shop signs hanging over the roadway seemed to have much life in them. Their colourful Chinese characters contrasted with the dullness of the scene as they swung in the breeze.

  For twenty minutes, they walked through the streets until they reached a wide, straight, tree-lined road called Boundary Street and set off along it. The tenements gave way to three- and four-storey apartment buildings and houses with well-tended gardens behind walls. Nicholas noticed the birds singing again and, as they passed one gateway, a chow dog wagged its curled-up tail but simultaneously growled at him.

  They were about half a kilometre along this road when Ah Kwan made off at a brisk pace, breaking into a run to a road junction a hundred metres ahead. He poked his head round it then ran back towards them.

  ‘Japanese coming,’ he stammered, his breath coming in gulps.

  Tang instantly turned, looking for a gate through which they could escape to hide. There was none, only a long, high garden wall.

  ‘Stand still,’ he commanded Nicholas. ‘You do like we do.’

  Around the corner marched five Japanese soldiers, their rifles held out, the bayonets pointing forward. They wheeled about, one of them shouting a guttural order. Behind them appeared a ragged company of about a hundred British soldiers. Their uniforms were dirty and some of them were torn or bloodstained. A number of the soldiers wore grubby bandages around their heads or arms. Alongside them moved other Japanese troops, their rifles at the ready. An officer strutted with them, his samurai sword out of its scabbard and gleaming in the sunlight.

  ‘No look up,’ Ah Mee whispered, pushing Nicholas’s head down. ‘Look at ground. Kowtow.’

  As the column drew level with them, the three Chinese kowtowed, bowing as low as they could. Nicholas followed their example but, by twisting his head sideways, he could still see the prisoners passing by.

  His thoughts went immediately to his father. Would he be a prisoner by now? Despite himself, Nicholas craned his head a little more to one side, scanning the faces of the soldiers, hoping to catch sight of his father and yet, at the same time, praying he would not see him captured and defeated.

  It was now the reality of the situation dawned on him. The British were no longer the rulers of Hong Kong but the vanquished underdogs. And, like the prisoners, Nicholas too was conquered. The realization scared him yet, at the same time, it made him feel defiant. He might be beaten now, he thought, but he would not remain so. He had no idea how he would – or could – fight back: all he knew was that, if the chance arose, he would do so.

  The captured troops looked exhausted, beaten, miserable. They did not speak or even march in step. Some helped their wounded comrades or carried their packs for them. Several pushed carts loaded with possessions. When one wounded soldier, a corporal with a shock of ginger hair, stumbled, the Japanese officer ran at him waving his sword. For an awful moment, Nicholas thought he was going to slash him with it but, instead, he screamed at him and struck him across the shoulders with the flat of the blade. The corporal staggered under the blow and lurched on.

  As the column disappeared down the road, Tang ordered Nicholas and the others to set off again. They walked in silence. The sight of the prisoners had shocked them. When Nicholas looked at Ah Mee’s face, he could see tears wet upon her cheeks whilst Tang’s jaw was set in anger.

  After another two kilometres, the road wound round the perimeter fence of the airport. The runway was pockmarked with shell craters and empty except for one burnt-out aircraft parked on the c
oncrete apron, its wings warped and its tail fin riddled with bullet holes. All the terminal building windows were smashed and the air was tinged with the smell of charred rubber.

  ‘Now we go top-side,’ Tang stated, pointing to where the road climbed towards a pass in the surrounding mountains. ‘No more road after we go up. Then more easy walk.’

  The higher up the hillside they walked, the more tired Nicholas grew. His shins started to hurt and his bundle seemed to get heavier. He tried carrying it on his back but that only made his spine ache. By the time they reached the pass, he was panting.

  ‘Soon we stop,’ Ah Mee encouraged him. ‘We come small village soon, can sit down.’

  It was not long before a small hamlet came in view to the left of the road. It consisted of a line of half a dozen houses with curled tiles on their roofs and several paddyfields of dry stubble in front of the doors.

  ‘This place call Tseng Lan Shue,’ Ah Mee told Nicholas, adding, ‘this name mean village with well and wall of tree all round,’ in the hope that this information might interest him and take his mind off his aching legs and back.

  A dog barked a threatening welcome at them as they left the road. Outside the first house, they sat on a stone bench, the dog sniffing round them cautiously. No one appeared until Tang called out in Cantonese. At the sound of his voice an old man came out of the house and, after a hurried conversation, provided them with bowls of water and strips of dried squid. Nicholas bit into his share: it was like chewing salty rubber but, somehow, it gave him new strength.

  ‘We go long way now,’ Tang told him as they prepared to leave. ‘Walking on small path. A little up, not too much. More down.’

  For the remainder of the afternoon, they travelled along paths which wound along the contours of the mountains, dipped into gullies, crossed streams, passed almost invisibly over grassy slopes or meandered through woodland. Every so often, a wild pig or a deer broke cover ahead of them, startling Nicholas and Ah Mee but not Tang or Ah Kwan. Neither of them faltered in their step. Whenever they came upon a village, they avoided it, keeping to the edge of the farthest fields, or just inside the cover of trees. Twice, they stopped at tumbling streams to drink and rest their feet but only for a short while. Tang was anxious to press on.

  Every now and then, Nicholas glanced away to the south. There, hundreds of metres below them and over a kilometre away, he could see the sea sparkling in the bright winter sunshine. In the far distance were islands and bays and, beyond them, the open vastness of the ocean.

  As dusk fell, Tang stopped and held a hurried consultation with Ah Kwan who left them to disappear into the gloom.

  ‘Where has he gone?’ Nicholas asked, leaning against a rock beside the path. Despite a cool breeze blowing up from the coast, he was sweating, his newly close-cropped hair itching under the rattan hat. His fingers were red from grasping his bundle and his arms felt numb.

  ‘Dark soon,’ Tang replied. ‘Must be sure no Japanese come here.’

  It was night before Ah Kwan returned and reported the way was safe. Once more, Nicholas took up his bundle. Despite the rest, he felt all the more tired as they set off.

  ‘Have we far to go?’ he asked in the hope they were near wherever their destination lay.

  Ah Mee looked at Tang and said, ‘Maybe one more hour. We go down now. No more walk up in hills. Now we go down to the sea.’

  They descended a steep incline, crossed some fallow fields, made their way round a hamlet of houses and a temple, skirted some sampans pulled up on a beach and fishing nets hanging from trees to dry and reached a path which ran along the shore. The breeze coming off the sea was stiffer now and chilled Nicholas to the bone. Only the light of a thin new moon like a narrow sickle lit the pathway for them.

  Nicholas lost track of time. It might have been a few minutes or it might have been an hour later when they arrived at a footbridge over a creek. Ah Kwan signalled for them to halt under the shadow of a spreading tree whilst he edged forward and scanned the crossing. Finally convinced all was safe, they set off to traverse the bridge. This was nothing more than several wide planks which looped from the shore to two stone pillars in the middle of the stream. As they crossed, the planks bucked and sagged under their weight. Beneath, in the bright moonlight, silver flashes indicated where a shoal of fish was twisting and turning in the current.

  ‘No too far now,’ Ah Mee whispered as they reached the far bank. ‘Ten minutes…’

  Nicholas made no response. He was too tired now to care.

  At last, they mounted some stone steps, went under an archway and arrived in what Nicholas assumed was a village on the shore. He could hear waves lapping. Tang approached the first building, knocking softly on a door. After a few moments, it opened and they were ushered into a low room illuminated only by a tiny guttering oil lamp. Nicholas was shown to a hard, square chair and handed a bowl of tea which he sipped as quickly as he could, despite it being piping hot.

  ‘You go sleep now,’ Ah Mee suggested.

  An old, bent lady took the bowl from him and Ah Mee, carrying his bundle, led Nicholas into another building. At the back of a room, a charcoal fire glowed under what looked like a massive stone table. Upon it was spread a padded quilt. Instead of a pillow was an oblong block of dark green lacquered papier mâché, a dragon painted on it in gold.

  ‘This a kang,’ Ah Mee said. ‘Chinese bed. Very warm. You sleep good.’

  Not even undressing, Nicholas lay down.

  ‘Do you really think my parents are all right?’ he asked drowsily as Ah Mee removed his shoes.

  ‘No worry,’ she replied in a whisper, her face pink in the light of the charcoal. She folded the quilt over him then, leaning forward, for the first time ever, she kissed him on his forehead just as his mother had.

  It was snug under the quilt, the smooth stone beneath it reassuringly warm and dry. Nicholas rested his neck upon the block pillow and, within minutes, was asleep.

  When Nicholas woke, it was mid-morning. He slid off the kang. The fire underneath it had gone out and the charcoal was now just a pile of grey ash. He unwrapped his bundle to find Ah Mee had packed it not with his own but with Chinese clothes and a pair of felt shoes. Yet deep inside the clothing, he found, was something which was his: it was a small silver photo frame containing a picture of Nicholas and his parents, taken when they were last on leave in England. Nicholas was sitting next to his mother in an open carriage on a miniature railway at the seaside, while his father was posing on the platform. His great-uncle Henry had taken the picture. Nicholas could see the old man’s shadow on the ground, just touching his father’s shoes.

  Looking at it for a minute, a wave of sadness flowed through him. Yet he fought it: he had to be strong. The picture was not just a reminder of happier days but, he thought, also a test to keep him resolute. He propped it on a shelf above the kang then, putting on the felt shoes, went to the door and stepped outside. The sun was warm, the blue sky patched with fair weather clouds.

  What Nicholas had thought in the night was a large village turned out to be only a row of two-storey buildings set against a steep wooded hillside. They were constructed of grey stone and had grey tiled roofs the ends of which curled upwards like dragons’ tails. Beside each door was pasted a red prayer strip with gold characters painted upon it. The doors were not hinged but made of thick planks which fitted into a groove cut in the stone lintel. In front of the buildings was a flagstoned terrace along which ran a very low stone wall above a five-metre drop to a pathway. In the centre of the terrace grew a lychee tree, its branches spreading out over the wall. At the end, there was a narrow gatehouse over a curving passageway of smooth stone steps which descended out of sight to the path. At the other end of the terrace was a building from which a snorting noise was coming.

  No one was about. He might have been alone were it not for the noise. He went towards the end building, the door of which was open, and peered in. A hen flapped its wings and ran out past him as he
entered. The floor was strewn with straw and the air had an unfamiliar sweet stink to it. Looking over a wooden partition, Nicholas came face to face with a massive black pig. It raised its snout at him and snuffled like someone with a bad cold.

  Nicholas was so surprised, he took a step back and bumped into an old man standing right behind him. The man’s face was lined, his eyes narrowed to mere slits with age. From a mole on his chin sprouted five or six long white hairs.

  ‘Jiu! Pig!’ the old man exclaimed, his face cracking with a grin. ‘Man pig.’

  He lifted a wooden pail and poured a liquid mush into a trough. The pig started to rout about in it, sloshing and guzzling the swill. The old man pointed beyond the feeding animal to another sty.

  ‘Lady pig,’ he added.

  Nicholas stood on tiptoe. He was just able to see the hairy back of another pig behind a second partition. The old man lowered the pail to the ground, took Nicholas by the hand and led him back into the sunlight. Standing in a line on the terrace were Tang, Ah Mee, the wizened old lady he had seen the night before and a girl of about his age. In the background, a black mongrel lazed in the sun. The old man let go of Nicholas’s hand and joined the others.

  ‘Ah Kwan gone. He no my family, no live here,’ Tang announced rather formally before introducing the others. ‘This my father and mother,’ he went on, then, looking at the girl, added, ‘This my brother daughter. Her name Qing-mai.’

  The old man and woman bowed to Nicholas who, feeling it was the correct thing to do, bowed back. This caused everyone to break into smiles, the old woman muttering something.

  ‘What is she saying?’ Nicholas enquired.

  ‘My mother say you a very polite boy,’ Tang translated, ‘got good manners, make good Chinese boy.’

  ‘What are your parents’ names?’ Nicholas enquired.

  After a moment’s consideration, Tang replied, ‘You call them Venerable Grandfather and Grandmother. Now we must work. You stay here with Qing-mai. Can help later.’